Fanny Burney, who is best known as the author of novels Evelina and Cecilia, held the position of ‘Keeper of the Robes’ in the court of King George III and Queen Charlotte between 1786 and 1790. As Keeper of the Robes, Burney aided in dressing the Queen in a mostly ceremonial role, twice a day. Her role enabled her to form relationships with members of the royal family and household.

Fanny Burney was involved in court life at the time of the menus examined in this project and her extensive collections of journals and letters offer insight into her life and health at court and others who became affected by King George III’s illness. More information about members of the royal household present at the time of the menus can be found here, in one of our previous blogs.

To ‘a certain Miss Nobody’

Frances Burney as cited in hester davenport, faithful handmaid

Burney wrote her first diary at age sixteen and always wrote as if for an audience.[1] Initially, she wrote to an imaginary friend but by the time she was twenty, Burney’s diary became letters that she exchanged between her sister, Susan and other family friends. In her time at court, Fanny continued to write journals for Susan despite having been advised to not share details of her role in the royal household to the outside world.

‘The King is not well; he has not been quite well some time, yet nothing I hope alarming…’

FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

In October 1788, Burney wrote of the King’s illness which delayed the courts return to Windsor from Kew. The court were delayed for a week and Burney describes the melancholy and the difficulties of the time where anxiety was high. As King George III’s illness progresses, Burney shows the impact it had on the household and how his behavioural changes were perceived by members of his court. She also kept records of conversations that she had with other members of the royal household such as Colonel Goldsworthy and Colonel Digby that portrayed the anxieties of those close to the King.

‘Nobody stirred; not a voice was heard; not a step, not a motion. I could do nothing but watch, without knowing for what: there seemed a strangeness in the house most extraordinary.’

FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

During the period of illness, Burney’s relationship with
Queen Charlotte is highlighted showing the companionship between the women and
the increased pressures of Burney’s role as King George’s illness continued. On
November 5th 1788, Burney was called to serve the Queen at one in
the morning, after the royal family had dined. During the meal, it had been
reported that the King had a violent outburst at one of his sons. She described
the Queen as appearing ‘pale, ghastly pale’.

‘Deeply affected, I hastened up to her, but, in trying to speak, burst into an irresistible torrent of tears…She looked like death – colourless and wan; but nature is infectious; the tears gushed from her own eyes, and a perfect agony of weeping ensued…when it subsided, and she wiped her eyes, she said ‘I thank you, Miss Burney – you have made me cry – it is a great relief to me – I had not been able to cry before, all this night long’.’

FRANCES BURNEY AS CITED IN HESTER DAVENPORT, FAITHFUL HANDMAID

It was decided in November, 1788 that the King would move from Windsor to Kew to ensure privacy. On 5th December 1788, Dr. Willis was introduced to Colonel Digby and as seen by the inclusion of his servant in the menus, he was still present in the court in December, 1789. The King began a steady recovery in February 1789 and 23 April 1789 was celebrated as a day of thanksgiving for his recovery. As part of the celebration, Fanny Burney was awarded a medal for her service.

Royal Archives, LS9-226_0007,14 December 1789.

Burney left the Queen’s service in July 1791. She continued to write letters and journals after she became trapped in Paris while visiting with her husband and son when the Napoleonic Wars restarted in 1802. She even wrote a detailed letter to her sister, Esther, about her mastectomy without anaesthetic in 1812 which you can read courtesy of the British Library.

Diaries and letters provide an alternate source which help to contextualise the menus in court life. The letters written by Burney give individuals of the court personality and character that make them feel more tangible. Burney also provides a valuable insight into the health and feelings of those surrounding King George III during his bouts of illness.

[1] Hester Davenport, Faithful Handmaid: Fanny Burney at the court of King George III (Stroud, 2000).

Visiting the Special Collections at the Albert Sloan
Library in the University of Essex was an eye-opening and fresh experience for
me. It’s not everyday that you encounter centuries-old books and I was looking
forward to seeing (and smelling) these ancient books. You know that musty old
book smell that some secondhand book stores have? That was what I was expecting
when we were ushered into the collections. However, I was sorely mistaken and
now that I think about it, I really should have known better than to think that
the books in this precious collection would be allowed to deteriorate enough to
produce that musty smell. As I oh-so-carefully drew a book out from its place
on the shelf and flipped through its pages, I was in awe at the structural
integrity of the books. Its robustness honestly surprised me, not to mention
the pages that were hardly yellowed or fragile, unlike my books left out for a
year or two in the sun and humidity. The quality of the paper that was produced
centuries ago made me question the quality we have now, although I suppose that
is the difference between tedious manual labour and convenient mass production.
It also led me to question if books were then the domain of the wealthier
class, for they must not have been cheap to obtain. Literacy was also limited
to a lucky few in Britain then, so the people who were able to purchase these
books, to read and write in them, must have been from the upper strata of
society.

My curiosity about the methods of conservation and preservation of these books brought me to the Parliamentary Archives Collection Care team. On their website, they outline some measures such as the application of preventative methods, the provision of ideal environmental conditions, careful handling, and collection management. Books would contain mostly organic materials like paper and leather (perhaps in the book covers or binding) would seem to require the utmost circumspection.[1] The Parliamentary Archives stores collections at a tight range of humidity and temperature levels, but I am unclear if the Special Collections in the Albert Sloan Library are stored at the same standards. Books that were received in particularly bad condition or are rapidly deteriorating would be subject to “’minimal intervention’ techniques, such as re-attaching a book board to a binding, or for more serious cases…‘full intervention’ techniques, such as re-sewing broken down sewing that holds the gatherings of a book together in the cover (binding), or repairing holes and tears in a paper/parchment document”[2]. This left me wondering if any of the books I had thumbed through had been restored in some way or another, but without a trace such that the original integrity remains.

Olfactory stimulation aside, the first thing that struck
me visually as I lay my eyes upon the rows of books lined up on the shelves was
how nondescript they were. The book spines were plain, the colours earthy, and
the external design rather homogenous, requiring close observation to identify
the differences. Occasionally, the edges of the paper are printed with a
pattern that some may find familiar.

I often see this pattern in the scrapbooking section of my local arts and craft store and was surprised to see it had lasted through the ages. Some others have a pattern that reminds me of what I might see through the microscope.

Nonetheless, their unassuming exteriors actually conceal treasures. Some books feature such exquisite and intricate pull out maps, not unlike the geographical maps we might see in travel guides and fantasy novels these days. It is a thrill to see a city that may no longer exist by its former name and imagine the landscape and scenery. The maps also illustrate the forms of printmaking that were in practice.

Some of these books were printed, while some were
handwritten. The printed versions naturally indicated that the books were meant
for wide distribution, hence the necessity for mass-printed copies that take
less time to produce. An example here illustrates the proper manner of eating.

The contents of these books surely reveal the matters that were of concern in society at that time as well, such as witchcraft in England. On the other hand, the handwritten books typically lend a more personal and palpable tone to these historical archives. Yes, a lot of them are banal records of a household’s spending, or a town’s records of births, deaths, and marriages, but these are all testimony to lives lived, and are such important contributions to developing a nuanced understanding of a different time.

This all ultimately begs the question: what gets remembered and what gets forgotten? Of course there is the matter of what was lost in the many years that have passed between the creation of the book and now, but if a book does reach the hands of a decisionmaker, how might they determine if it is important enough to be conserved? Berger discusses some of the factors that might affect this decision, as it would involve “deciding the value of an item to the collection today and hypothesizing its value to the cultural record some years from now”.[3] The factors include the “extent of damage, amount of use, content, artifactual value, rarity, and market value, among others” and it becomes necessary to create a kind of ethical code and selection policy. [4] It is all a rather risky business to me as judging if the content and value of a book is important can be influenced by the prevailing beliefs in society. Should the words of a woman for example be deemed frivolous in a particular time and therefore be left to disappear with time, people in the later years would never even have realized the loss of a whole world and perspective. I think this issue is an increasingly complex one as we progress into a digital age where there is an overwhelming amount of data to sieve through to decide what should be preserved. There are all new formats and topics whose cultural importance are not yet obvious, and it would certainly be a pity and a headache for future historians if valuable information is lost in this teething period.

[1] Parliament of the United Kingdom, “Collection Care”, Preservation and Access, <https://www.parliament.uk/business/publications/parliamentary-archives/who-we-are/preservation-and-access/collection-care/>, [accessed 1 April 2019].

In the modern world, spending time in the kitchen and developing new methods and recipes for cooking has somewhat diminished – with many preferring the sociability and immediate readiness presented by restaurants and fast-food establishments. With so much choice and a wide-range of cuisine styles, it is easy to see why but whilst we are spoilt for choice, are we depriving ourselves of the same choices and styles in our own kitchens?

Elaine Leong’s article on collecting knowledge has made me consider what culinary secrets my family may hold, if any and why such knowledge has not been passed down to me as readily as it may have been for a first-born daughter in an early modern household. Leong explains that the family worked as a collective and that no one member was exempt from contributing to the pages of what would become a family book, dedicated to food recipes and medicinal recipes for the curing or relief from ailments but also of lineage and family history. [1] Whilst I can’t imagine my parents keeping such records, as they too prefer the efficiency of modern-day dining and have the luxury of modern healthcare, I thought of my nan, who seems to always be hand-preparing food for our visits.

Upon speaking with her, I soon came to the realisation that whilst early modern households preferred the handwritten sources of knowledge, my Nan retained hers internally. When I questioned her on any potential family recipes passed down from her mother and Nan she simply replied with “It’s all in my head. I remember because I watched my mother do it so often, it just became something ingrained.” To my surprise she also told me that she had never measured anything and that written recipes, because of their reliance on measurements, were better thought of rather than written down – as by reading them, you felt restricted to follow them precisely. Instead she judges her quantities based on visual appearance – something else she attributes to watching her mother closely in the kitchen. All the recipes she then went on to give examples of tended to be those of the dessert type – puddings and cakes.

When I questioned her further on why she had never
passed down the knowledge to my mother, she simply replied that it was because
she didn’t need it and had never asked or showed an interest in collecting the
knowledge. My mother, whilst she cooks many fresh and homey meals, does not
tend to make things such as bread and puddings from scratch – which is mainly since
they are so cheaply and readily available in the supermarkets pre-made.
Modern-day families tend to be working families now, with each member absent
from the house daily, going about work and education. When and if the entire
family does reside in the same room at the same time, time is very much of the
essence and so in respect of my mother’s household, there simply isn’t the time
to invest so much in to baking and dessert making.

Only a few hours after the initial conversation with my Nan, I received another call from her – correcting her early notion that every recipe she had was mentally retained as she had a digitally kept version of a recipe for Irish Soda Bread passed down from my granddad’s side of the family. It had come in to her possession after a distant family member had come across the recipe in his ancestors’ collections and had transcribed it digitally to distribute to those members of the family that lived too far from him to be able to verbally communicate. Upon glancing at the recipe, I suddenly came to a realisation about my own habits of collecting information.

Whilst I have already mentioned my awareness of my Nan hand-preparing food, I personally, had never asked for her advice when preparing food, myself. The digital format of the soda bread recipe was so familiar to me that I realised that I had spent a great deal of time looking up recipes through search engines, rather than collecting it generationally and I had done so naturally and without thought. With everything so readily available via the internet and with the devices connected to the internet being so vast and numerous, I had flocked to them for the answers to my questions, rather than speaking with the people in my family. As a product of my time, I also tend to buy ready-made ingredients from the supermarket and much of my daily food is plucked from the depths of my freezer. Whilst I cannot change my past actions, glancing over the surface of the potential culinary secrets of my family has made me determined to give use to my kitchen and to make the most of the knowledge that could be available to me, if I only I could stray from the convenience of the internet and verbally and physically communicate with those around me.

I have wracked my brain to think of a subject for this, my last blog post of our academic year’s involvement with Margaret Baker’s recipe book. To be honest, so close to the end of term my brain is numb and I cannot effectively put pen to paper on any one particular scholarly point of our digital recipe project. So, I thought I’d appraise the exhibition website our group has just completed. After the initial panic, denial of our technical prowess and frantic last minute virtual collaborations that threatened to crash Facebook, the subject of this blog rests upon comparison.

Before I compare and contrast the seventeenth century with the twenty first I must stress how proud we are of what we produced, how we conquered our fear of technology and found that team spirit that we were afraid would not materialise.

Our website is our ‘masterpiece’. [1] Not a pompous boast it is a reality, comparing directly with the piece of work completed by apprentices in the past. While our skills have not been seven years in the making, we, like them absorbed knowledge and skills passed on from master to student. In years to come it will be a testament to the progress we made under the watchful eye of our tutor. It will also stand as the bar upon which we can either rest, or from which we can climb even higher.

Our engagement with Dr. Lisa Smith’s Digital Recipe book project has taken us from novices to accomplished scholars. We can transcribe incomprehensible scripts;
understand concepts of empire, alchemy, chemistry and medicines contained within what at first appeared to be no more than written instruction. We can also now effectively navigate our way around early modern primary texts, reconstruct and experiment with confidence.

Our ‘masterpiece’ is comparable with Bakers Manuscript in as much as it has been a collaborative undertaking. Baker has her contributors, Lady Croon, Mistress Corbett, and through her friends, relatives and aristocratic connections we have snapshots of her life and have placed her in context. [2] We too have collaborated, forged alliances, networked and brought different skills to the table.

Like baker we have used our foremost technology; for her ‘the book’, for us ‘the website’. Yet herein lies the greatest difference between ourselves and Baker, namely our modern quest for perfection. There is no denying that digital technology has enabled the wider study of Bakers book. However, alongside what has been gained we must also look at what has been removed. From the pages of Bakers book 1675 and those of our modern website 2017, it seems to me especially that something has been ‘lost in translation.’

Both Baker and ourselves are represented on the page by our words yet it is only Baker’s thinking processes that are evident. To read Baker is to know far more about her than it is to recognise us on our website. To compensate we included an ‘about us’ page but that was a statement of what we thought the reader would like to know as opposed to them discovering us for themselves. Alternatively, to ‘find’ Baker is quite
thrilling. Despite there being a possibility of a more sophisticated edition, this her assumed workbook has an abundance of clues to follow. But our website, unless we had consciously designed it to do so reveals nothing personal about the HR650 students who compiled it.

Clear and precise if a mistake is made on a website it can be erased leaving only perfection. It does not entertain the workings of the mind, a process that is so thankfully clear in Baker. We are represented by our words but not our thought processes. Baker crosses out, makes mistakes, creates ink splodges, and leaves stains from cooking or experimentation on the page, indicative of experimentation, change of mind, a new direction to pursue, a muddled train of thought to be improved upon later.

Today, a mistake is inexcusable. Deleteable type makes it is so easy to ‘get things right’. Yet for Baker mistakes were unavoidable, ink would soak into porous ‘rag’ paper and if a large piece of text was heavily crossed through, the reverse was almost illegible.[3] For Baker mistakes or miss-thoughts were unavoidable unless she discarded her papers. This highlights emotion in her penmanship, the feelings that accompanied a clear, steady, neat and light hand were going to be different to those involved in heavy dark strokes. Even if the writing was not hers we know that by the very differences we can see.

Today by striving for uniformity and perfect presentation we have lost the personal and individual. While Intelligence and reasoning is still present in mechanically written words, character and personality is not.

In my second blogpost I argued that if Baker and I ever met I would recognise her, divided only by time. I still think that. Alternatively, if she could see our website, unadulterated by mistakes she would think me perfect and unknowable. As a concept usually reserved for God, it is reasonable to assume then that going back in time would be easier for me than coming forward would be for Margaret.

Having said that I will report that at the moment we launched our state of the art ‘masterpiece’ the cork from the celebratory champagne popped unassisted. Perhaps Baker was there in the shadows and did not need mistakes on a page to know everything about us after all.